


Definitions of Love

by TurtleTotem



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, First Kiss, Internalized Homophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-13
Updated: 2012-09-13
Packaged: 2017-11-14 03:25:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/510815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TurtleTotem/pseuds/TurtleTotem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik says he loves Charles like a brother. There is nothing, he insists, inappropriate about the way they interact.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Definitions of Love

I.

Erik has not had a friend before, not since the faraway dreamland of his childhood. He's had tools, people he threatened or manipulated into helping him. He's had colleagues – Mossad agents, most of them, people whose skills he respected, whose competence he trusted. But the idea of liking any of these people, of seeking their company outside the mission at hand, is not something that ever really occurred to him.

He likes Charles.

He likes Raven, too, he supposes, and the other "children" as Charles calls them. He's intrigued by their potential, and surprisingly touched by the way they look to him for approval and leadership – not as much as they look to Charles, of course, but that's as it should be. He tries to provide guidance to them, as much as he knows how. He cares whether they succeed, and that in itself is unusual for him.

But Charles. Being near Charles makes him feel real and alive, known and valued and… liked. Erik thought anger was the only emotion he had left, but in Charles's company he rediscovers surprise, curiosity, worry, compassion, affection – an infinite rainbow, endless shades of feeling. Charles has given Erik back to himself, shown him that he will still exist once Shaw is dead. For that alone, Erik would consider him a friend.

Charles is endlessly fascinating to him, presenting every moment a contradiction for Erik to puzzle over. He is fully capable of being arrogant and self-deprecating in the same breath. He advocates peace and nonviolence while training them for battle. He's brilliant and confident and completely socially inept. He is gentle and warm and physically unimpressive, so easy to mistake for weak, and it is only the fierce glitter of his eyes, the occasional casual display of breathtaking power, that reminds one what a mistake that would be.

It doesn't occur to Erik, friendless for so long, that there's anything odd or inappropriate in the way he and Charles interact. How close together they stand, the length of time they hold eye contact, the frequency with which they touch each other – he's not conscious of these things at first. When Erik wants something, he goes after it, and when he wants to touch Charles, he does, without particularly examining the impulse.

Then he catches Moira watching them, narrow-eyed and thoughtful, and hears her mutter to Charles, "the two of you watch yourselves when anyone from the CIA is around, we don't want someone to get the wrong idea."

Erik feels himself flush hot, furious that anyone would dare imply he and Charles were queer, would look at a strong and vital friendship and see perversion. One man could care deeply about another one without wanting to do disgusting things to him.

If Charles glances at him over Moira's shoulder then, as if he'd overheard that thought, and if his expression is sad and painful, well, surely that means he agrees with him.

And if Erik's dreams, thereafter, take a very strange turn indeed, so that he wakes before dawn with his heart pounding and his sheets soaked with sweat, and his mind scrambling to bury all memory of the dream deep enough that Charles can never find it – well, curse Moira for poisoning his thoughts, putting ideas into his head that were never there before.

Charles is fascinating and infuriating and giving Shaw hot competition for the position of center of Erik's world. Erik is prepared to admit to loving him like a brother. As an only child, there is no way for Erik to know how very far off the mark he is – how seldom a man is aware of his brother's physical beauty the way he is of Charles's eyes and lips and skin, how rarely even the closest of brothers plan their lives around each other the way he is prepared to plan his around Charles.

 

II.

Moira fires a gun at him, because she is human and frightened and a frightened human will always turn to guns. 

Erik deflects the shots wildly, recklessly, because he is not accustomed to caring what happens to the people around him.

And out of all the thousand ways this moment could happen in any of a thousand universes, this is the one where the bullet dodges the question of whether Hank's suits are bulletproof by hitting outside the suit altogether, and Charles falls to the sand with his eyes wide open and blood pooling around his head.

Erik doesn't run to him. For a subjective decade, he only stares. They all do, motionless and silent while the missiles tumble from the sky. Slowly, staggering on legs that don't want to acknowledge their connection to his body, Erik goes to him, falls to his knees, reaches out with a trembling hand that doesn't dare touch.

And Charles blinks. Draws in a shuddering breath, eyes focusing on Erik's, and reaches for Erik's hand.

"A graze," Hank says, gruff with relief, and Erik has no idea when Hank came to be there. "Just a graze – copious bleeding and possible concussion but he should be fine—"

Erik isn't fully aware of the choked sob that bursts from him as he gathers Charles into his arms, rough with haste, clutching him so tightly it seems he's trying to merge their bodies into one. With a light, breathless laugh, Charles pushes his knees up beneath him and molds them even tighter together, arms around Erik's neck. The cold edge of the helmet is digging into their cheeks; Erik claws it off impatiently, drops it in the sand and turns his attention back to Charles, one arm around his waist and the other hand buried in his hair, carefully avoiding the bloody place but pressing him insistently closer. 

He's pressing his lips to Charles's hair, then his forehead – not kissing really, nothing that well-formed, but certainly his mouth is against Charles's skin – anyway it's not strange to kiss your brother, surely, under these circumstances, it doesn't mean…

He doesn't care, to tell the truth. This feels far too good to stop, he _needs_ to do this, to touch Charles this way. Soft-mouthed and trembling, he works his way slowly down Charles's face – forehead and eyelids, cheekbones and jawline and – the edge of Charles's lip and then, with a distant shiver of fear, the soft heat of his mouth entire.

Oh _god_ it's the most perfect thing he's ever felt, like everything in the world is finally in the right place, and Charles is kissing him _back_ , which no part of him had ever dared imagine, is pulling him closer with a sweet desperate fire to match his own.

 _We can't let the humans separate us, never,_ he thinks, knowing Charles will hear. _We're fighting for the same thing._

"It's not that simple," Charles says, pulling back just barely far enough to breathe. "But yes."

 

The years that follow are hard, and sometimes terrible, and never simple. It seems like there are at least as many shouting matches as kisses between them. But never, in all the long years of Erik's life, does it occur to him to leave.


End file.
